I recently had the opportunity to run a couple of Dragonbane tables at our local Charleston NerdFest and thought I’d relate my experience of running 2 5-person groups with zero Dragonbane experience – or even knowledge – through the Castle of the Robber Knight.

It was funny, as I was waiting for the event to start, the organizer came by my table and let me know that he mostly got glazed looks when he mentioned one of the tables was running Dragonbane. Like, what the heck is that and where’s the D&D? Thankfully, there were enough adventurous souls who signed up for my table – I had a full complement of 5 players for each session.

As start time approached, the players started arriving and I got to learn that most of them had, in fact, played something other than (or in addition to) the 800-lb fantasy gorilla. And all were game for learning something new.

Now, before getting into the module, I spent a bit of time on the prematter – introductions of the players and of the rules. I think this worked out great in that I just set some expectations (roll under system, single-action combat rounds) and got us playing in about 20 minutes.

If you’re not familiar with the Castle of the Robber Knight module, it’s designed as a one-shot and shipped with the Dragonbane rulebook. Very simple premise. It’s…

Okay. Timeout. It’s weird I have to say this but, times being what they are… the rest of this post is going to have spoilers for, you guessed it, Castle of the Robber Knight. You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

Castle of the Robber Knight is a simple premise – there’s a castle that’s supposedly haunted, or at least cursed, and the evil emanating from it is causing some problems for those who dwell in the vicinity or pass near it. In reality it actually is haunted, but there are some goblins involved in keeping things (un)lively and stirring up trouble.

In my case, I provided a glimpse into the history of the site using some cinematic descriptions of the battle between Hrothgar Wolfsbane and the elder kin, culminating in his defeat by the orcs. The players really needed enough information to connect the things they find – particularly the orc helmet and the knight’s helmet (with skull) – with the background. The model tells you, the GM, what’s going on, but you need to decide how best to convey this to the players. I generally don’t like the whole “Fade in. We see a blah-dee-blah…” approach to GM-ing, but in this case, it did work quickly and effectively.

Next was establishing a premise for these new adventurers to venture forth. There’s not really a ton of treasure involved, as Dragonbane mostly uses random treasure generators (that I really like) and that could result in just a few coppers. So I set them into an early spring when there’s been a brutally long winter, the village is getting desperate for supplies and the merchant caravans are having trouble getting past the Castle of the Robber Knight! The village matriarch asks them to help. Bingo! Reason to go forth and stamp out the evil that threatens the village.

I found it important for the party to find the orc helm on their way there. It’s locked behind some skill checks, but you want to help new players to find it. Maybe with some veteran players you let the chips fall where they may but, for newbies, they need to be shown the importance of the various skill checks.

My first group found it and, wisely?, chose to just toss it in their pack for potential sale. The second group? Oh hell yeah they were going to wear it. I mean, it makes great sense to put it on and get the armor bonus and it makes any interaction with the Robber Knight’s wight that much more fun (and dangerous).

From there, I mostly operated with theatre of the mind (TOTM). I put a simple sketch of the castle layout on a piece of paper but used no maps, grids, or tokens. Damn that was refreshing after thinking of how much a VTT adds to the workload of running a game!

Group 1, after dealing quickly with the goblin ambush in the courtyard, headed to the hall and met Jaldo, who completely convinced them he had fallen on hard times. I give myself 30% of the credit for being convincing and 70% credit to players just wanting to adopt a pitiful pet. Group 2, however, failed every check in the hall (and I gave them many retries) and never met Jaldo before heading down into the cellar beneath the tower.

This caused some problems. The wolfkin (we used the pre-gen characters) decided Merle the pig looked awfully tasty and… a couple great rolls later, was feasting on pork chops sans applesauce.

If the party goes from Jaldo to Grunta to Merle, everything can be resolved very quickly. Any decision to bring the Robber Knight into the scenario can be quickly resolved by giving him the helmet and skull found in the water by Merle’s nest.

If, on the other hand, your players never meet Jaldo or Grunta until after finding Merle and the knight’s helmet, they may very well don the helmet. A future run-in with Grunta, smelling like a BBQ and with bits of bacon in your fur, is not going to endear yourself to the woman. And, yes, I ran her like a little old Jewish woman. It’s a thing I do. (Merle was NOT kosher!)

And so, if you have a mallard knight wearing an orc helm and a halfling thief wearing the knight’s helm and the wight appears, he will NOT be happy. Further, if neither player decides to take of said helmets, a monster with a ferocity equal to the number of PCs minus one (in this case a ferocity of four), there will be a major chance of a TPK.

In my case, the thief was making Death Saves, the knight had broken his battle axe parrying a blow from the wight, the wolfkin was paralyzed having failed multiple fear effect rolls, and the hunter was down to one hit point. Only the elementalist mage managed to put the wight down, and that was after I rolled to determine that the knight’s helmet slipped to the ground when the thief went down, allowing Wolfsbane to retrieve it. Oh, and the hunter had the knight’s skull in a bag, which the wight also retrieved. 

And so the spirit of the knight was laid to rest, Grunta went off into the world without her best friend, and Jaldo slipped quietly into the background to maybe cause trouble again in the future.

A wight is a nasty affair, especially with a ferocity of four. With some many attacks that affect multiple players, you may want to adjust this a little bit.

As I discovered, there’s an easy path if the players take it, but there aren’t any real hints to guide them that way. Depending upon your group, you might want to telegraph things a bit to get them to meet Jaldo and then Grunta before they find Merle and the knight’s helmet. Then again, having it all go to hell in a handbasket was a lot of fun. You just need to be nimble to keep it interesting and fun.

So there you have it. If you’re in town for next year’s NerdFest, stop on by.

If you’re thinking to run Castle of the Robber Knight yourself, give your players some history ahead of time and either telegraph some optimal decisions if they’re new to RPGs or be prepared to adapt quickly to some crazy shenanigans.